


A Taste of Eden

by Ferengiphanatic



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Don't read this if you're hungry, Food, M/M, Snake Crowley, Too many questions, being mad at your boyfriend for 100 years because he stole something off your plate, food fluff, itchy questions, squirmy crowley, starving for understanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 22:30:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21233552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferengiphanatic/pseuds/Ferengiphanatic
Summary: Crowley spends 6000 years watching Aziraphale eat. It's not time wasted.





	A Taste of Eden

**Author's Note:**

> I have replaced food with writing and it shows.

Of course, Crawley had noticed the angel in the garden. It might as well have radiated light. Its flaming sword certainly did. It was in his job description to keep an eye on these things and he liked to think that he was doing a first-rate job at it.

He hadn’t seen an angel since… Well, since he’d asked too many questions and had to… saunter down from Heaven.

The garden was lush and beautiful. He decided he rather liked it, especially considering the alternative was Hell itself. It was an easy choice to make, really. God, as architects go, made some interesting choices. Sometimes unexpected ones.

Things should have been routine, but Crawley, having spent so much time observing, began noticing something that surprised him. Each time that Adam or Eve began to eat in view of the angel, something seemed very different about him. He went from being a perfectly competent angel to being something else. One time, when Eve bit into a peach, the angel dropped his flaming sword.

It took him a moment to recognize the look in the angel’s eyes. It wasn’t exactly a look he thought angels could do. It was desire. It was hunger. As interesting as it was that Adam and Eve had appetites, it was a thousand times more interesting to Crawley that an angel had them.

This was all very curious, and it was in Crawley’s nature to need to know more. He started seeking out new fruits and placing them near the angel’s patrol area.

Crawly knew hunger. He knew desire, but unlike the angel, he hungered for a succulent “Why?” or a delicious “Why not?” There was an appeal to a question that he just couldn’t ignore. It was a desire that itched under the skin and tingled down the spine and coiled round and round his heart. Even in the face of God he couldn’t ignore it. He just had to know things.

And so should Adam and Eve. And why not the angel too?

Crawley thought about these things as he watched a grape roll its way toward the angel’s bare feet. He watched the angel pretend to ignore it until Adam and Eve went for a swim in the river. He watched the angel bend over as if to pet an animal and then watched as the angel, with a sideways glance, probably toward God, pocketed the fruit in his tunic.

This small nugget of a question. This morsel of rebellion was almost too much for Crawley to bear. He coiled and uncoiled and squirmed in his spot. The angel whistled and reached a hand into his pocket. He made as if to clear his throat and with a sort of sleight of hand, he ate the grape.

Crawley’s tongue flicked out in pleasure. The angel had certainly eaten the grape! That angel’s expression looked like what being in Heaven had felt like only sideways and with a pop! This made Crawley wonder even more about the angel. Maybe there was something alike about them after all. Were they both so desperate for satisfaction? 

For years after, Crawley -- Crowley now -- had attempted to find little ways to run into Aziraphale. Usually in a market square stacked high with spices or maybe at a great flood, but it was upon the advent of restaurants that things once again got interesting. That’s when the delicious questions would come itching at Crowley’s skin.

What new food will he be eating? How drunk will he let me get him? How satisfied will he look when the meal is done? Would there be consequences? What foolish thing might Aziraphale do this time to satisfy a craving? Will he risk discorporation to satiate his hungers? The questions tingled down his spine.

Eventually, Aziraphale’s smiles got warmer and there became fewer questions and more comforts. Crowley would squirm in his chair and his tongue might flick out absently and he’d forget to blink. He would use words that felt warm like “friend” but he still hungered inside for itchy questions.

And so, one day at dinner, when Crowley’s skin itched hungrily to ask a question he had been starving to ask: “Why do you care about me, Aziraphale?” he decided to reach over and steal a bite from the angel’s plate, just to see what might happen.

What happened was that Aziraphale didn’t speak to him for a full century. It gnawed and ate at Crowley and it ached like hunger turned sideways. Aziraphale was out there, in the world, eating things and being satisfied and he was doing it all without Crowley. So, he bought Aziraphale the finest chocolates and came squirming to the bookshop, hollow and broken. He spoke words that felt like “Sorry” which he didn’t know could fill him up like a “Why?”

And Aziraphale said words that tasted like “forgiven” and then words like “scrumptious” and all was as it had always been.

But that was all some time ago. The world had nearly ended, but it didn’t. Now here Crowley was toasting the world with Aziraphale by his side at the Ritz and it was once again all too much to handle. He itched. He squirmed. He was starved for something that he simply couldn’t understand. Aziraphale looked at him like he might be on the menu. Wicked. Delicious. Devious. He reached over very deliberately and stole most of Crowley’s meal.

Crowley’s tongue flicked out and he coiled and uncoiled inside. He reached over to Aziraphale’s plate and took the whole thing. Crowley’s heart thumped in his chest. He smiled his most devilish smile. Sinful. Sensitive. Then scared.

Aziraphale’s cheeks got red and his lips thinned. Crowley’s eyes yellowed more around the edges. He was ready with “I’m sorry’s” and bursting with “Forgive me’s”.

Then Aziraphale laughed like a songbird. Crowley’s heart fluttered like angel wings. Aziraphale slowly reached over and held Crowley’s hand. Crowley noticed an odd sensation. Like an itch scratched. A hunger sated. For once he felt he could be still. And maybe content. Maybe this was being content. Six thousand years and this felt new. Crowley looked into Aziraphale’s eyes, all sugar. Aziraphale looked back at Crowley, a smile that could swallow you. A look that said: “I could eat you up.”


End file.
